WSO Podcast | E64: Former Lazard M&A Associate and the Entrepreneurial Itch
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Member @grbarasia shares his unique path that landed him in equity research, M&A and now a family office running private deals and a global macro fund. Listen to find out why he graduated NYU at 19 years old only to go directly for his MBA at Cornell. How he ended up eventually breaking into M&A at Lazard in New York, but only after stints in equity research in Tampa.
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WSO Podcast (Episode 64) Transcript:
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:06] Hello and welcome. I'm Patrick Curtis. Your host and chief monkey, and this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast. Join me! As I talked to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general. Let's get to it. In this episode, remember Grbarasia shares his unique path that landed him in equity research M&A. And now a family office running private deals in a global macro fund. Listen to find out why he graduated NYU at 19 years old, only to go directly for an MBA at Cornell. How he ended up eventually breaking into M&A at Lazard in New York, but only after stints in equity research in Tampa. This pod is really fast paced and really interesting, so I hope you guys enjoy it. Gregory, thank you so much for joining the Wall Street Voices podcast.
Grbarasia: [00:01:08] Thanks, I appreciate you guys having me.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:01:09] So it'd be great if you could just give a summary of your bio.
Grbarasia: [00:01:13] Sure. So my background is a little bit unique. I mean, sure, I like to think that, but I can kind of dive into it, so I did my undergraduate at New York University. I actually finished on graduate when I was 19 years old, so I was pretty young. And interestingly enough, I did sports business management as an undergraduate. So the original plan coming into school, I was very young. I wanted to be the general manager of a sports team, and I really didn't know anything about finance and know anything about investment banking had no experience. I grew up in Georgia, so it was pretty far from the industry. My parents weren't in finance or anything like that, right? When I got to NYU, I very quickly realized that I did not want to work in sports anymore. And so that was kind of part of the reason I encouraged myself to graduate in three years. But I also started a small online retail business, consumer retail, wholesale, retail kind of thing. It was specifically focused on consumer electronics, and the business did well enough where I was able to make some money, obviously not retire off of it. But it was a robust enough experience whereby I was able to go to Cornell for business school immediately after graduation. So as compared to most people who do the traditional graduate at 20 to work for a number of years and then go back to business school because they need that work experience, I had kind of, you know, had a robust enough experience. Plus my scores were OK. So I actually started business school at the age of 20. Up in Ithaca. And again,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:46] That's crazy, man. That's super young. That's like, first of all, even if you graduated in three years, you must have started high school early
Grbarasia: [00:02:54] Partner coming in.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:55] You're already calling, coming in and then you rush through it. Do you like, do you feel like when did you kind of make that switch of like, OK? No, I don't want to do the sports management thing. I want to do this finance thing. I mean, it's understandable because you're at NYU, you're in the finance capital of the world, right? But tell me, what's it just?
Grbarasia: [00:03:11] No, it's actually the exact opposite of that thought process. So what happened was it wasn't like a pull towards finance. It was a push away from sports management. So my father was a general management guy, had studied at Cornell and studied at Harvard. And he had always encouraged me just to go to an Ivy League school. I only applied to NYU. I didn't look at any other schools. I didn't visit any other schools. And it was solely because NYU has the number one sports management program in the nation. And it makes sense because you have every single major sports organization franchise or at least two here, right? Plus you have the headquarters of all the leagues, you have agencies, et cetera here. So that was why I got here. I my first semester, maybe as my second semester, I took an internship at a kind of a sports marketing type company, and that's when I immediately realized it was a huge mistake. And the reason was partially because what you see in sports is the same thing. You see a fashion and a few of the other kind of industries that people work in that they love to work in, which is that you have people who are master's degrees advanced, incredibly smart people working for incredibly low amounts of money, which was less of a concern to me. But it was more just like if I have a master's degree, I don't want to be the guy who who's responsible for picking up coffee and stuff like that. And so because you had so many people who would love to work for the New York Yankees or love to work for the NFL, they were kind of lowering themselves to do a task that was, in my opinion, beneath them intellectually. And so that was when I started looking at other options, and it wasn't even that I wanted to do finance. Actually, it was. Entrepreneurship was the idea, which was why I started that kind of consumer electronics business. And I still, at that point in time, had no idea about finance and had no idea about banking or investments or anything.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:00] So this was freshman year you started this business. So it makes sense. Like you went there, you say, Hey, so many people want getting into this, you know, sports management thing. Everyone's like, I get it. So you're like, This makes no sense. Like, everyone's just dying to get in here. It's if you look at it as like a market or a stock, it was way over, way over overbought. Yeah. Ok, so
Grbarasia: [00:05:19] And it still is. I mean, look, how many people are saying it was so I think the internship was my freshman year and then I did the business over that summer after my first year when I officially kind of started the whole thing.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:30] Let's talk a little bit about that. That's interesting. So you just started this on a whim or what gave you all my business entrepreneurship.
Grbarasia: [00:05:36] So I had no idea what I wanted to do again. It's going to be a running theme of mine. So I went on to these like business brokerage websites. I knew I wanted to try to run a business. I'd always been entrepreneurial. I had a business. My first business was when I was four years old. My mother was a home economics teacher, so she taught me how to knit oven mitts, and I sold them to her friends for a quarter apiece. When I was in high school, I rented out a second locker and would fill it with candy. And actually, that business was so successful that I got shut down by the school because enough parents were complaining that their kids were going to school and they were supposed to be eating healthy meals and some. How they were managing to get Snickers and Milky Way and stuff, so I actually got shut down by the man, so that might be informed by political views a little bit.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:21] It's a good lesson. It was a good lesson.
Grbarasia: [00:06:23] Yeah, exactly so. So I always wanted something. I had no idea what I want to do. I found this company called Blue Type kit Wireless, which at that point in time was nothing more than a website. Some inventory, a customer base and an exclusive relationship with a company called Every Electronics that did at this point in time. Now, keep in mind, this was like 2006, so it was a Bluetooth wireless headphone dongle. So back then, Bluetooth wasn't built into your, I guess there weren't even iPhones or iPods. And so you could you could you plug in this adapter, put it down, work out at the gym, et cetera. And so the guy was essentially he was running it as a second business. He was selling it for effectively less than the amount of inventory he had. And then on top of that, it came with the website. And so I figured, all right. Well, this at least gives me a little bit of a fast track to being a business owner. So I kind of, you know, it was it was a very small amount of money. And so I was able to just get it from some of my savings and then a couple of bucks from my parents would like to purchase it and do it.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:28] 10 grand, 20 grand, something like that.
Grbarasia: [00:07:30] Oh, it was not even that. It was like five grand, five grand. And then some, like five grand and some legal stuff. I think all it was like six thousand bucks.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:37] So was that basically, were you able to kind of get rid of the inventory profitably
Grbarasia: [00:07:41] And oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It wound up going pretty well. I mean, so one of the things that I realized was we had this product again. If you think about a wireless headphone and now at this point in time, it's very easy to think of. This was almost fifteen years ago. And so everyone was thinking, I will well, originally I was thinking, OK, I should go to. A lot of people, people like to work out and yeah, they were a good customer base, but I actually got a lot more sales from nursing homes. And what you would have is you would have these couples. Beautiful couple have been married 45 years. Everything is great there in the assisted living community together. But they were getting to these massive fights and I saw this everywhere. It wasn't just one or two times, and the fight inevitably would always be over. How about the television should be? And then you would have to have these people come in and blah. So I said, look like you can have a few of these lying around and you're kind of television rooms or whatever and allow your, I guess, residences what they called them to use them. So I I built the business to a point where, you know, I made a few bucks. It was never anything massive. And then ultimately, when I got accepted into Cornell, I had a very short turnaround time to decide whether or not I wanted to try to go through a sale process or effectively just liquidate the inventory. I chose the latter, but it really was kind of at that point in time, I still was very unsophisticated. I mean, I'm still quite unsophisticated in general, but about pretty much everything. And and it was a very unique opportunity to learn about business from, like the absolute grassroots. It was really like thinking about a business on its smallest scale, which I think actually ultimately helped me a lot and continues to inform some of the decisions I've made to this stuff.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:22] All right, that's fair. So you're basically, but you're going to get at your MBA at 19 years old or 20 years. You know, it's I was twenty at that point. Yeah, so it's super young. Did you ever feel like, Hey, maybe I should. Do you feel like that was enough experience that running that business was enough? Did you ever feel like, Hey, maybe I should go work for a little bit first? How did you?
Grbarasia: [00:09:42] Well, I didn't have time to think that, but I will tell you right now I'm going to get my MBA was a horrible decision at that point in time, so I'm going to be the first one to admit it wasn't a great move.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:49] Why? Why do you think in retrospect?
Grbarasia: [00:09:52] Yeah, so the reason, I said, is that business school, in my experience, is essentially a vocational program. It's two years. But if you think about it from your first class in the fall to your last class in the spring, it's only 18 months. And on top of that said, you want to get into investment banking. The recruiting window starts like the first December. You're there because they have to get the internships, and then that pretty much sets you off. So that's really like a two or three month window. And so the way I would describe it to anyone is that, look, if you go to a top business school, you know, say what you want about Cornell. I still think it's a pretty good program, but and you know what you want to do going in? I would say ninety nine, maybe not ninety nine, but 90 percent of the time you'll achieve it to some level of success rate. If you go in and you say, I want to work in investment banking, so maybe you won't come out and wind up at Lazard or Goldman, but you'll get an investment banking job. If you say I want to start a business or I want to do marketing or that's the problem I had was exactly the same issue I had in why I wound up. There was I had no idea what I wanted to do because I had no idea what any of those things were. I still remember to this day, like JPMorgan came on campus for an informational, I want to say, two or three weeks in, and I had no idea what J.P. Morgan even did. I mean, that's not me being hyperbolic. Like, I just literally I had heard the name, obviously, but I didn't know what investment banking was. I didn't know what consulting was. So I was still under this idea and we picked concentrations. I don't know if all business schools do that, but Cornell, at least at the time, did. And so my concentration was entrepreneurship, and that was actually the reason why I chose Cornell. I had a few other schools, both for MBA and then also for kind of like master's of finance type programs. But Cornell was a smaller school. It's only two hundred. It's the smallest Ivy League school, so only 200 students per class. And then they have like an entrepreneurship concentration, which I was able to be a part of. But up until then, I still had no idea about finance.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:47] Got it. So you get your but then so you ended up going to Lazard, right? So how did that whole thing happen?
Grbarasia: [00:11:52] Well, okay. So yeah, so my summer internship was essentially some guy who had started a not a biotech company based out of Virginia called Cary’s. Nano science just needed someone to help him, and I wasn't getting paid or anything like that. And essentially, what he was doing was I didn't even really realize that, you know, I wasn't really cognizant of what was going on, but he was trying to raise the second round of funding. He's raising about five million bucks. And I guess he had done a kind of a seed round. And so maybe this would now be considered a series, a round, whatever. But I had kind of started taking some of the tools I had done in in school and put together a financial model and put together an investor presentation materials and thought about what the business worth. And I still didn't truly understand what I was doing, but it kind of clicked and I was like, Wow, that's pretty interesting. I kind of am now looking at this business from a perspective. And keep in mind, part of the other thing was having done that entrepreneurship concentration, I didn't take any finance courses. I took art. There was an introductory finance course that everyone was required to take, but at least at Cornell, the business school. Was other than your first semester, it's very open in terms of what classes you can take. Right. And obviously, as an undergraduate, I didn't take any finance courses. So up until this point in time, I'd taken one introductory finance course and so I really had no idea what anything was. And I just found it pretty interesting. I came back that second year and was like, All right, well, now that I kind of learned a little bit, I understand the opportunities that investment banking can afford. Someone let me try to get into investment banking. And so this
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:28] Is late this year. But this is yeah, this is it doesn't surprise you said it's a complete disaster. It doesn't surprise me. Yeah, it sounds because you're coming into second year with like an internship for helping some start up guy trying to raise a second fund. You have no banking experience, you have no finance. So how do you actually end up pulling it this off?
Grbarasia: [00:13:48] So, OK, so the story gets even stranger, so I feel like at that point in time, I was just focusing on trying to find jobs. So I did a couple of things. My number one priority was educating myself, which is something that I try to encourage even to this day. Now, despite even when I was at Lazard, everything, I am sure that I read one book every week. Now, obviously it was hard. That was harder. But I think that I've learned more and positioned myself better because of just my ability to learn and read on my own. The second thing I've always done is I've always tried to be like. As proactive in that process as possible, so. So I'll tell a couple of stories, so the first one was even when I came back to Cornell, I kind of had heard about investment banking, but I also heard about this thing called private equity or this thing called venture capital. And I still think if we understand what any of that meant. But I did know that, you know, I had kind of had the small business experience. I was pretty good with numbers, you know, I was somewhat smart person, so I wanted to learn more about it. So in about February, I emailed, as I said, remember the number six hundred and twenty one of the top VCs in Silicon Valley. This was Sequoia. This is Kleiner Perkins. And this was completely random. Not even any Cornell connections anyway. And I literally just said, look like I'm going to be in San Francisco in March. Spring break was like March, whatever it was, 13 to 17, whatever, whatever, five day period. And I said, I'm going to be in San Francisco would love 15 minutes to have a coffee and just chat and learn about what you do. I was literally all I said. Yeah, yeah. So of the 600 people, as you would expect, about 10 percent of them get back to you. So right, then you're getting 60 responses. About half of them are polite, but obviously say no. But I wound up setting up twenty five meetings. And what was funny about that was, if you remember the timeline I was, I was still only 20 years old, so I couldn't rent the car. So my mother actually had to fly out to San Francisco and meet me at the airport and we rented a car. And so every morning I put my suit on and five minutes a day. We drive. And they were all in Sand hill Road, right? So that's what's even funny about it. So we would drive to one meeting. She would sit in the car for half an hour, read a book, then I'd get back in and she'd drive down the road for the next meeting. She'd sit in the car for half an hour and then I'd go from there and I would say I was trying to get two things out of it. Most people say, Oh, you want to get a job, but I didn't even know enough to want to get a job. Honestly, I was completely naive. I literally just wanted to know what these people were doing and like, understand what it was that they did. Did you
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:18] Gain that? I week, that week, that week you spent there with your mother, chauffeur, you around. Did you actually gain that knowledge? Did you feel like those meetings were helpful?
Grbarasia: [00:16:28] I would say I went from like a zero to a five. So I didn't really get to the point where I was well versed. But I think the zero the five is probably the hardest part to get. So being able to get that part in a week was helpful. And I think just sitting and the thing I admittedly did a poor job of was I didn't do a great job of maintaining those connections. I actually, you know, and I think that's something I'm happy to talk about once we get to the Assad part. But yeah, you know, when you're working 120 hours a week, you fall in touch with people and then it becomes very transactional and you just hit people up all the time. So I admit I did a poor job, but I think that I did get a good sense of just like this is what these people are doing. But on top of that, other things like that they would say then started resonating later on as I had more points of contact. So it's almost like, you know, maybe you learn a point and it doesn't completely understand. You don't really understand it, but then down the road, it clicks. After you learn something else, you're like, Oh, yeah, that's you know, this guy said this. But like, I said that. And actually one of the guys I met with whose name I continue to say this shows you why you should keep it, such as people was Jeremy Lu. And the only reason I even remember his name is because I was reading an article about the guy who made the first investment in Snap chat. And that was that was Jeremy Lewis. So there's a few other guys, you know, with all these big problems and you know, a few of them are quite influential people now. So it was it was a unique experience. And I think that that's one of the things that I've always been comfortable with is just kind of putting myself out there. And, you know, being willing to be the dumbest guy has never really concerned me.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:53] So you still haven't told me how you actually made it into Lazard, because that's not an easy because that's not because that's not an easy jump, right? Like so OK. So you go you spend your spring, your spring break. This is the second year now.
Grbarasia: [00:18:06] Yeah, that was my that was my last ever spring break.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:08] And so you have no you have no job. You have no job lined up at this point
Grbarasia: [00:18:12] For after no job, nothing. So it gets better. So nothing, I graduate. So no job lined up. I've got a buddy of mine who lives down in D.C. I go to visit him and I'm kind of in a weird mood, so I don't know why I did this. I go to a cigar bar and there's the J.R. cigar. I'm like 17 or whatever. I don't even really like cigars that much, although now I've become more of a fan at that point. I didn't. And I'm sitting there and I've got nothing to do all day. And I started chatting with this guy and he happens to be the CEO of an investment. Look, I mean, I kind of romanticize a little bit. I chatted with one guy who then introduced me to this other guy who happens to be the CEO of a project finance based investment bank in DC. So they were specifically doing like energy finance, multinational type like, you know, coal projects in Nigeria, solar panel plants and the Dominican got it, that kind of thing. And I explained to him pretty much the exact same story I just told you. And I said, You know, this is where I am and said, look like I can't really hire you, but I like you. I think you're a smart guy if. You're interested in I can pay you a stipend enough for where you can cover your living expenses and you can work here pretty much as long as you want. It'll allow you to have something on your resume. You'll get some experience and then I'm happy to be a reference, whatever you know, if it goes well, I think you're done. Let's do it. So I moved down to D.C.,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:40] You know, this is right. When you graduate, this is right. After you graduate. Right after you graduate.
Grbarasia: [00:19:43] Yeah, right after graduation. It's like, this is I think I met with my buddy, like the weekend of graduation. Oh my god, I wound up moving down like two weeks later or something. All right. All right, then. And the thing that was weird about it was, and I understand why now. You know, maybe this is helpful for people you know who are. And I'm happy to talk about that, but I understand why. I guess I'll take a step back. So for me, I thought it would've been very easy to get a job right because if you think about it, I was 22 years old, the same age as someone coming out of undergraduate, and I was looking for an A-list level roles, right? I wasn't going for MBA level positions. I kind of knew I was a young guy. But the issue was that, as I'm sure you know, as I'm sure you know, whoever is listening to this might be able to understand the traditional banking hiring systems are very regimented. So like they know who their next analyst classes, and they knew who the intern classes, which leads to the analyst class and they know who they soft circles from the sophomore year. Right? So just breaking in any kind of red flag is a negative. And the one thing I'll say then, you know, hopefully this isn't too inflammatory in general, like whether you're a hiring person or they're an HR person or whether you're a head-hunter, whether you're a recruiter. I've never in my life gotten a job from any of those people because in my experience, their job is to fill a position as efficiently as possible, right? And that means as little red flag risk as possible. So they're not actually looking for the best candidate. I can give you a million reasons why I'm a better potential growth equity investor than someone else, but I would never be put up for that job because my background isn't the traditional, you know, Princeton, two years at Goldman, two years at KKR, right back to Harvard Business School and back out. So everything I've ever had to do has been some combination of, you know, me figuring my way out and just kind of networking. So anyway, so I met this guy, wound up down in D.C., was there for about six months. My mother was having dinner and she's in Atlanta, Georgia. And. Somehow, I met some guy at Raymond James, and I don't know she she's more of a networker than I am even. And so somehow gets this guy's contact information encourages me to reach out to him. Next thing you know, I have a round of interviews with Raymond James as Equity Research Group. Now, keep in mind, I have no idea about what equity research is because I can barely understand what equity is. And somehow I managed to get through that. So my first ever quote unquote real job was in November, after I had graduated in May. So I was in DC for about six months, and then I went down to Tampa, Florida, and took a job in equity research in the real estate group there. And at that point in time, the only reason I picked Tampa's in real estate was because my brother was at the University of Tampa. I had no interest in real estate either way, but I just wanted to be close to my younger brother. And so I was there, got I'm starting to sound like the Forrest Gump of something, but I
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:43] Know this is great. This is interesting. So you're down in Tampa, you're having a good time with your brother.
Grbarasia: [00:22:49] Yep, exactly. And that was when things started to slowly click. I started realizing that equity research was great. It was great to have kind of like, you know, a bank on my resume. But the way I describe it to people like I always say, like, you know, if I can describe something to my mother, then that means I can explain anyone. Is that, you know, like if investment bankers are the ones out there making the news, the equity research guys are just the ones reporting the news. So, you know, we would do all the earnings reports and the other I mean, keep in mind in real estate for the public reads, those are very slow moving guys, right? They'll buy a building, they'll issue equity. So it was a very it was a very boring job in the sense that not a lot was happening and not boring in the sense that I didn't like it, but I just thought it was very slow moving. So I immediately started thinking to myself, All right, well, how could I get into a? How can I get into faster and banking, faster pace, which I kind of always been percolating since I'd come back from that internship, I guess? And it also, you know, in D.C., I kind of was technically working in investment banking. I worked on a solar panel deal. I work on a few other things which were starting to be more modeling intensive, et cetera. Right. And so I just reached out. I sent an email to it and it was art and said, Hey, this is my background here, but more and more. And he said, OK, and we got on the phone just
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:06] Lazard on a meeting. You just reach out to those after you reached out to 20 or 30 or
Grbarasia: [00:24:11] So, I reached out to a few. I will say it was interesting because I reached out to pretty much anyone that would talk to me. So I did that through like alumni. I did that through, you know, connections. Some of it was just cold in terms of people that I actually wound up having kind of phone interviews with. I think it was Mollies. I think it was. Obviously, it was hard. And then I think there was a J.P. Morgan in there and most of them.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:38] I was just going to say, is this mostly from alum from like Cornell, from your MBA or was NYU? Or was it a mix
Grbarasia: [00:24:44] Like the people? It was a complete mix. It was. It was literally just like I would log on to the alumni directory and just find anyone. And then I was like, Also, just search online or LinkedIn, whatever anyone who I had a connection with, I would just put that in the subject line. So like, if it was an NYU graduate, I'd put like NYU alum looking for career advice. And the thing I always have found, which is helpful, is I've never actually asked for anything. I always just say looking for career advice. People generally enjoy talking about themselves, as I'm sure you know, doing this podcast. And so if you can get someone on the phone with the idea of like, Hey, like, I just want to learn more for 15 20 minutes, there are a lot more receptive to that. And if they understand what you're doing and then, you know, the other thing I've kind of learned over time is having a tangible ask. So it's not just like, how can you help me? It's like, Hey, I'm looking for X, Y and Z because I think people generally are good hearted. It's just that they do want to. You know, they want to be able to help it in an efficient way.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:42] So what was your what was your tangible ask, just like, is there anyone else that I could speak with? Is that? Yeah, yeah, so.
Grbarasia: [00:25:47] So this one was not this one. Not because I always thought that was kind of a cop out. Is there anyone else? So mine was just mine was very simple. I was just like career advice. I would talk to them about it. They look, this is what I'm looking to do, and I say, I'm looking to be in investment banking. You know, I have this experience. I've done this at the other. And then I would just say, don't talk to it was a similar point. I would be like, Are you guys interested in or like, Are you guys looking for people? If so, who should I speak with? If not, you just keep me in top of mind. Because again, there's a timing discrepancy. But here's what you could actually use that to your advantage. Like the chances of you getting someone right when they're in the middle of looking for someone or very small. But if you can pre-empt it, as long as you're in their mind before they get, you know, they're in. He doesn't have to be timed perfectly. So that was kind of like I made it very clear to them that I was looking for a job and that if anything came up to keep me in mind and that was effectively it.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:38] Yeah, I mean, smart. And do you feel like it didn't take long after that? Or did it take a few months or when?
Grbarasia: [00:26:42] No, no, it took a year. It's like a year. It took a year. And part of that was like, Look, I mean, I had an interview with Wallace that went absolutely shit. I had no idea what to expect. What happened? I had that one.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:51] You got grilled on Mike Nichols or what?
Grbarasia: [00:26:53] Yeah, it was like it wound up being technical. And like, they asked me about some of the companies. I was covering that together. I was just prepared for, you know, your traditional self interview. So I remember now when I had the third one and I had just sorry, go ahead.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:04] You weren't ready. Come on, man. Like you hadn't been on Wall Street way since at that point, seeing all the nightmare stories.
Grbarasia: [00:27:10] You have to understand where I'm coming from this whole world for me, and I don't know why. I guess it's just a naive thing like I just none of it even now is real to me. It's like all these people who grow up and understand it, and they're on Wall Street and I've been on it since I've seen where people say I'm in high school. What is the best college to go to? Like, that's not how I was thinking about it. Like, right, I graduated high school at 16. I was just trying to figure out how to meet J. Perfectly honest with you. I kind of like it because I like sports. Like, I'm not saying I'm a smart or a dumb guy. I just I just was never thinking like this. And even to this day, I would make the argument that's probably one of my biggest weak points. Is that like, I don't know, maybe it's good. Maybe it's bad.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:50] You know, when you're not planning, you're not planning 10 years ahead of like your path and all that stuff, which is no
Grbarasia: [00:27:55] Plan 10 years ahead. But I'm not one of these guys who's like, Look, I have enough confidence in myself that like. I'm going to I'm going to. It'll be like, you always have to be on the path, right? There's always a path for everyone. But hopefully what anyone takes from this is that you can still go a circuitous route. And I would actually make the argument that everything I've done, so I'm 30 years old now. I would make the argument that compared to every other 30 year old, I'm probably in the top two percent in terms of like ability to add value in various sense. Now, obviously, that's a cocky, egotistical thing to say, but I think that I actually have a lot more perspective than the traditional kid who went to, you know, some great school came out for, you know, that same background. Because having worked with those kids, there's a couple of things I learned. One is that they're a dime a dozen because everyone is trying to go down the same route. It's very easy to find those people and to they get very good at playing a game, right? And it's kind of like when you're in school, right? But you can be very good at school, get straight A's and ultimately not learn much because you're just good at knowing what to regurgitate, knowing what to write in papers, et cetera.
So I do think that like when you and some of it self selection, right? Like clearly, I'm not the kind of person who's ever going to be able to rise through, you know, a larger organization just given this background. But on the other hand, you know, we can get into it and a family office type thing, you know, where it's a little bit more flexible. I'm a little bit able to kind of be entrepreneurial. I'm much more suited towards that. So I don't necessarily think it's a good or a bad thing. I just think that my personality allows me to be a little bit more of a chameleon, and having those experiences allows me to relate to them, you know, having gone through the Lazard analyst program, but at the same time, having to go this this way about it then informs a lot of the things I've done since so. So, you
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:44] Know, so you basically you manage to get into Lazard. You flamed out in a Molas interview prior to that. So you were kind of a little bit more ready, I guess, for the Lazard interview, right?
Grbarasia: [00:29:53] Oh, for sure. I mean, I actually I went down the road of like I printed out all my research reports. I had the interview over lunch, so I went home. I had everything prepared on my on my little kitchen table. Yeah, I mean, like, there is something to be said for the fact that, like I said, look, there is a process. There are reasons why these things are in place, right? I, you know, whether or not I agree with them or not, they're not going to change. So I knew first for something. I mean, you got to play the game. So I tried my best
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:17] To do that. You played the game, you got the got the offer. And at this point, so you were getting what a stipend to survive. Basically, in D.C. and Tampa, you're getting probably low. Like what a sixty thousand seventy thousand dollars base?
Grbarasia: [00:30:29] Yeah, exactly. I think it was I think it was 60000 at that point in time. You, I got like,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:34] Yeah, you jump up to Lazard and what is it like? Eighty, something like that for base 70.
Grbarasia: [00:30:39] Yeah, I was coming in as a first year analyst 10 years ago. I think it was 85, but these are 80 or 85.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:46] And so
Grbarasia: [00:30:46] Then I think, my god,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:48] What did your bonuses look like and you were there for a couple of
Grbarasia: [00:30:50] Years? Yeah, I was just I think I think my first year bonus was like. You know, I actually think I was Middle Pack, right? We had three tiers, we had top tier middle tier loads here and I think mine was 60. Ok. And these are 55 or 60, something like that. It was right in the middle.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:05] Yeah. Did it kind of ratchet up in the second and third year like significantly more?
Grbarasia: [00:31:09] Or was it? Well, so it was. It was. Here's again, kind of like going back to my point of like having this weird perspective. So I was actually only an analyst for a year and a half get promoted to associate. And part of that was one. So, so OK. So I went into Lazard as the real estate group because I had that real estate background from Raymond James. Again, if you remember, there was no initial love of real estate but that big that I got OK at it and I worked hard, I got better. I around my in this kind of, I think, also is a little bit of the point I try to make is, you know, I started making it clear to the guys like, Look, I have an MBA, I want to do more consumer retail stuff just because that's naturally my interest. So I had a few goals in it like I wanted to get to associate level, which I thought was kind of like on par with the with the business school degree. I wanted to have some consumer retail experience. I did do some recruiting out to private equity and stuff. But again, as I mentioned, like given my background, no recruiters or head-hunters would really touch me. And then on top of that,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:14] Even when you were at Lazard. Like, you didn't get in, you didn't get any interviews.
Grbarasia: [00:32:19] Yeah, well, no, the issue was like, these guys are specifically looking for pre MBA type roles. But even if I would tell someone like I'm happy to take a premium type role, the woman again got it.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:29] No, no, that's so true. Private equity recruiting.
Grbarasia: [00:32:31] You know what I mean? Like you also like again, I don't want to say anything inflammatory because I'm happy to say my name out of the theory. But like the people who are dealing with pre MBA recruiting are generally like younger women who are new to Wall Street, who are very hardworking and diligent. But they are putting square pegs in square holes, round pegs and round holes right there.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:53] They're risk averse. They're not. Yeah, they're not going to take a risk on you. Yeah, no, I get it.
Grbarasia: [00:32:58] Well, no. But if they say pre MBA and they see an MBA, I mean, they just say, Well, this is not for me. Right? And so it was it was a frustrating experience because nothing and then on top of that, actually the real estate recruiting cycle is slightly different than the traditional recruiting cycle. So it's kind of, you know, a little bit of that as well. And so either way, I kind of pushed and agitated. And the great thing about Lazard and I am incredibly appreciative for my time there is it is a very lean shop in terms of both the deals that you work on. So it's very hard, obviously, but the people who make decisions are very visible, you're able to like. So I would go to the head of investment banking and do the exact same thing I did in San Francisco. I would email her secretary and be like, Hey, can I have 30 minutes to chat with him and just get career advice? Just talk to him. And I know a lot of people think like, OK, well, this is a way to kiss ass. But for me, actually, it was sincere. Like I was still at a point in time where I didn't know that much, where these conversations were incredibly helpful.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:59] And so what was that like talking to the head of investment banking? Like getting that time? You weren't nervous. You just you were confident enough to go in there and be like, Hey, I mean, I'm a second year analyst. Talk to me and give me 30 minutes of your time and you're busy. You just had that.
Grbarasia: [00:34:12] Yeah, I mean, look, it was it was actually when I was the first year analyst. It started to like pretty soon afterwards. And it wasn't that I was confident if I probably just too stupid to even think about it, to be honest with you. Like my, my thought was and in all honesty, like, I think realistically, people do respond to it. My thought was, You're an organization. You know, you were clearly a successful person. And my sense of everyone who I've met, who successful, having now spent time with people who are, you know, at a family office or, you know, close to a billion dollars. They part of what you do when you reach a certain level of successes like you do think about how can you impact the next generation, I don't know if it's a legacy thing or whatever it is, but I do think it's something that in my experience, people are generally, I don't know if the good hearted but people do care about. All right. Well, this is someone who works. And also, look, you have to put in the work. They're not going to do that. And then if they find out like, OK, well, you're just an asshole, they're not going to do that. But if they're like, Look, you're dedicating your time at Lazard, everyone was working very hard and everyone knew that, you know, you were working overnight. You're doing all this stuff.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:10] And ninety eight, 90 plus hour weeks or something, 90 hundred hour weeks.
Grbarasia: [00:35:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I would say, I mean, like as an analyst. At least, yeah, I mean, there were weeks, I would say, on average, I've tried to do this before. It was something really it was like every week, every year for a certain number of years I was in on Thanksgiving Christmas, Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day. It was like on average, I think it was like 75 80 hours a week. But then like, it would ratchet obviously between I think a light week would be 60 and then a busy week would be somewhere over 100. Yeah, just because again, you're looking at the teams were like, So ultimately, I'll kind of skip ahead a little bit. When I was on the Burger King Tim Horton’s deal, where we were the sole by advisor to Burger King without requiring Tim Horton’s, and that was with 3G. Our deal team on kind of a more junior side was me as the associate. I had one analyst below me and I had one VP above me, and that was essentially the old team. Now we had an MD who kind of would like interface with the client. But in terms of like doing the work and everything, it was just the three of us. So, you know, it's the good and the bad, right? You work very hard. And I think that's part of the reason why over that two and a half year time period, I was able to learn so much because, you know, it's like to the gym, right? If you go into the gym and you sit on the treadmill for two minutes, you're not going to get in shape. But if you really work hard, it's probably a little bit more unpleasant. But at the same time, you're able to get much more progress and get much better at things quicker. Sure. So I think you're there.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:44] So you're there for a couple of years. Did you feel like once you got the promote to associate and you said you kind of dabbled and thought of and potentially tried to do a little bit of private equity recruiting? Was it something where you were like, Hey, I just need to change a pace? Is it too much where if you're getting burnt out after two, two plus years or was it something where you're
Grbarasia: [00:37:02] Like a little bit different? So I would say part of the reason I brought up the business was I started kind of like, I think for a long time, I've always had this like thesis in my mind. And again, I don't necessarily know if I was smart enough to articulate it properly, but this is how it manifested itself, which was that there's this massive inefficiency in the lower market, and I'm still convinced it exists. And I can explain to you why it exists or not. But there's a number of reasons why. And essentially, what I realized was this again, probably some stupidity was I was like, like, OK, well, I should just try to figure out a way to do it myself. So I actually left Lazard. I met this guy on a train from New York to Philadelphia, and we wound up essentially starting a private equity shop, a growth equity shop. And it was a search fund, not committed capital sponsor. So we would go out. We would try to find transactions at the same time, try to find financing and then go from there. We raised $350000 into the business as operating capital. And then that was that. It wasn't it wasn't anything like. I never got the burnout, I never got the sick of it, like, I don't know it was, I think I think people do get that, but my sense is having been there, a lot of people stay there a long time and I think part of it is actually in a weird way because the deal teams are smaller and because you're working on so many unique projects, so much like I can understand burnout if you're doing the same thing over and over again, if you're putting together pitch decks that never go anywhere and you're doing that for a year and a half and you're like, This is crazy. But I think those are they. At least when I was there, they did a great job of like, if you wanted to work and you want to work on interesting projects, they would always provide you with that opportunity.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:46] So why so felt like this? This opportunity in the middle market or doing a search fund was a better opportunity or more interesting kind of your entrepreneurial itch couldn't be.
Grbarasia: [00:38:58] And also, I've always been someone who would rather look like it's just a personality thing. You have people who would love to be like, you know, x Title X firm, and they'd get a lot of value and kind of utility out of that. I've always been the kind of person who would rather own, you know, 50 percent of a $10 million business than be the head of investment banking at Goldman or something like that. Just a personal preference. I mean, I can see the value in both and obviously the long term financial rewards differ depending on how successful you are. Obviously, if I built that firm into Blackstone, then it's a different situation than if you wind up on the street doing nothing. But, but I've always just been more willing to take that risk.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:35] So what happened with this search fund? So you raised three hundred fifty two? Did you guys end up finding a company?
Grbarasia: [00:39:40] Yeah, so it was very interesting, actually. So we worked on a number of deals. We essentially operated as a merchant bank, so we did everything from Advisory Capital Advisory, Business Consulting stuff. We were affiliated with a broker dealer, so we could do, you know, all the traditional stuff? The Series seven, I had to do all that, you know, seven, sixty three, etc. And so we were able to get some good revenue from working with clients on a couple of different deals, some start ups that needed funding that we weren't able to invest in some larger buyouts. Keep in mind the start-ups, you're pretty much doing anything you can to make money, right? And then we were also able to get a couple of transactions that ultimately closed. One was a $5 million publishing deal. Uh, which took a little while, but got there. And then what was we worked on a large oil and gas transaction which were able to get a significant portion of the capital of that one. And then we got a we got a food and beverage deal done.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:36] But then where are you even sourcing? Where are you sourcing these? Like, how are you? What was the
Grbarasia: [00:40:40] Oh, I mean, I would like I would do a couple of things. So there would be like all these business brokers and all these people out there that I would just send random cold email to those people. Mm hmm. Some of them, you know, there's one, this one I don't want to name. But there was one where she's wanted to become an incredibly successful as a food and beverage concept. I just walked into the restaurant and I entered the store, I guess, is how you would call it. And I just started talking to her and I said, Hey, I think that this can grow and become a multi million dollar type business. And we spent a lot of time working with her giving some consulting advice. We wound up not being able to consummate a transaction. More on the capital side than on the business side. And you know, to her credit, she's gone on and become very successful with it. Interesting. So it was everything. I mean, there's literally just networking. There was a similar one that was a. That was like a fashion company that had a similar outcome where I met the guy was, you know, I think last year he did $16 million in revenue. And when I first met him, he had done like 250000 or something like that. So not bad. It was it was literally just kind of like it goes back to what I'm saying. There's a huge inefficiency in this market, partially because people don't realize what they have and they're unsophisticated, not because they're unintelligent, but just because, like, if you're a really good fashion designer, you've never really studied finance before. So there's a natural synergy between someone who understands that and someone who can help think through growing a business. And people who have obviously passion is just one example, but I was specifically focusing on operating businesses with sub. I want to say some $10 million in revenue at the time that I would start working with them. Right?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:42:22] Interesting. And so you did that for a few years. Why change? You sounded like you were getting a lot of different, interesting kind of mandate, stuff like that.
Grbarasia: [00:42:31] And so, yeah, so what happened was as part of that, I met this family office. It's to two families are two high net worth individuals both. We came from the public equity public space, one public equities, one more public debt, global macro type stuff and. I met him actually a year before I officially joined them, and it was part of that capital race thing and they said, Look, what you're doing is interesting. You're running around chasing your tail, looking for capital. You know, we're sitting on, you know, a significant amount of capital. And at the same time, we would be interested in maybe doing more private stuff. And then also, we have this kind of global macro fund that we're looking at building out a little bit more. You know, you can kind of where a few different hats. That seems to suit you. And I said, Yeah, I think, look, let me see how it goes over the next year. We got to a point where investors were able to get made whole with a small return able to kind of finish up. You know, that publishing deal with front of closing, we were able to kind of like structure it in such a way that everyone was happy and then I joined them full time about two and a half years ago, two years ago.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:36] And that has it been enough variety for you now that you've been there for a couple of years? Do you feel like you're still interested? Because I feel like for you, just talking to you in this short time we've been talking, it seems like you're your brain moves fast. Your words move fast. So the question is, the question is, can you stay in the seat for too long before you get bored? Because your brain, you know, when you're when you have when you're bright and when you're sharp and you're like always looking at the next opportunity, it always, I get it. I've, you know, it's not my personality, but I met people like that. So the question is, do you feel like you're fully utilizing like your full mental capacity in this role? Or do you? Yeah.
Grbarasia: [00:44:17] You know what I mean? Yes. Look, I agree with you and I need to work on speaking, first of all.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:23] No, I like it. We're getting a lot of information in a short amount of time.
Grbarasia: [00:44:28] Exactly. This is like I always tell people that I'm speaking fast and said, they're listening. Exactly. But no. So I would answer your question in a couple of different ways. So it's very unique in the family office world. It's incredibly unique, and that's probably a whole mother podcast in of itself. The thing is that when you've met one family office, you've met one family office, right? Like the joke that goes on industry because it's so unique. And I actually wrote an article about happy to share it with anyone who has read about it, about kind of like the diversity amongst the family offices, everything from people who have made their own money to people who have inherited it in different fields, et cetera. I'm very fortunate to be in a situation where it's to do with I'm being met and I have to be careful with that. But to people who have made their own money in finance. So if you look at the spectrum of people who are the most sophisticated and the least sophisticated generally as it relates to finance, people who have made their own money are more sophisticated than, you know, the fifth generation. And in terms of financial products, someone who's made their money in the hedge fund world knows more about finance than some guy who sold his, you know, trucking company. So from that perspective, these are kind of like the upper right quadrant in terms of sophistication. And on top of that, it's two guys. There's one guy who runs there like more public hedge fund type stuff, and then there's me. So there's literally just like the four of us. And, you know, we have a chief operating officer. We have a, you know, a kind of administrative guy and we have a pretty robust back office group. But on the investment side, it's, you know, it's for people.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:57] It's basically one. It's basically the two, the two people who have the money, right, who have the capital. And then you're running the private side where you're doing more like the private deals. How are you putting how much how much money do you have actually put to work if you wanted to, if you found the ideal doesn't matter.
Grbarasia: [00:46:12] That's a good question. So I started off being the guy who was doing the private side, and now I'm more of the guy who does the global macro stuff, partially because what I was going to say after spending all the good things about them is that the one thing about people that I realized is generally, if you've made a lot of money doing something in your career and this makes perfect sense, you're very hesitant to change doing that regardless of how much money you have. So we were working on one deal and as is the nature of private transactions it was taking, you know, I think it wasn't taking 13 14 months. There's renegotiations, there's trades, there's operating blah and they're sitting there thinking like, we're used to the world where you can be in and out of a position of multi hundreds of millions of dollars and, you know, a day. Why am I spending all this brainpower and time worrying about a $10 million investment? So what has wound up happening is there has been some kind of constant calibration with originally the idea was all right. Maybe we'll put together a $35 million fund and it's kind of evolved now to more of an ad hoc basis. So getting back to your original question about, you know, is this enough, the advantage that I have as compared to someone who's just sitting in a global macro seat because it's just such a small group? Because getting back to that point, like I do believe people are generally good hearted and to be, you know, I'm not just saying this because they're my bosses like, these are two of the nicest people I've ever met and worked for in my life. Like, you would never know that they've achieved significant success. They're just very down to earth like people. They're very open and willing to support and be sounding boards for a lot of different. So I do spend most of my time now or more of my time now on the Global Macro Fund. But I, you know, they put a seed investment into consumer goods company because they know I'm interested in that space that I'm starting to build out. We've had some discussions about a finch start up that old colleague of mine from Lazard is starting that you and I have been kicking around the idea for a while and obviously given their expertise, they'd be very valuable just as advisers, let alone as capital providers. And then a couple of other things that we've talked about. And so I'm very fortunate to be in a position where I kind of get a little bit of the best of both worlds. Talk to me
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:48:22] About. Talk to me about the global macro fund. So you're spending more of your time doing that. How do you how did you even pick up enough knowledge to feel confident enough to run that much money? Oh, I just on the fly. On the fly, you're like, I can't believe I'm trading this much, but like what type of what types
Grbarasia: [00:48:38] Of things as actually these guys kind of joke about it like. And I so tell them, like, you know, we'll be talking about convexity in one of these guys was like, you know, one of the top fixed income traders on Wall Street for 20 years, like, very well-known guy. And so, you know, we'll be talking about convexity, duration, and I'll say something that, you know, he probably learned as a second grader. And I'll just be like, All right, guys, I want everyone to realize I understand that concept now, you know, kind of like bust my own ass a little bit. But yeah, I mean, look like I did spend a lot of time when I first got there, I said, You know, do you have any books you can recommend? And I read 15 books. He gave me everything from like how to trade municipals. I mean, we've done everything from municipal securities to corporate government, you know, different derivatives futures stuff that I had.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:49:24] It's just really cool because you've done everything from like the advisory side to the private smaller deal side, the lower middle market to now doing a little bit of that, but also now all of a sudden global macro like your grilled mackerel PM.
Grbarasia: [00:49:37] Basically, exactly that kind of gets back to what I was saying. I mean, I kind of realize now when I said that, you know, if you took any 30 year old that I'd be in the top two percent of them, I realize now that sounds like kind of an asshole thing to say. No, but what I kind of meant by that was, was that exactly that point? I've looked at a lot of different things, and maybe I'm not an expert at any of them, but I feel facile enough in almost all of them that I could have a role and add some value. Why?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:50:03] Why do you hire? Why did they hire you? Was it because they liked how you were sourcing the private deals? And then they thought, Hey, this kid's sharp. But then why would they even give you like the keys to the global macro thing was because you're coming up with good ideas is because after reading that book, you impress them. Tell me how you got that trust.
Grbarasia: [00:50:21] I think it's a transition thing. But I mean, look like it's still not like I'm going there. I'm definitely not like a portfolio manager, like anything that I come up with. So goes through these guys. That's just how it was for everything. And even on the equity side, I'm obviously not involved there. But my sense is it's a very collaborative environment. So it's not like I can just go rogue one day, right? But I will say that, you know, the gentleman for whom I work either truly believes in me, or at least has a good enough job pretending that when I do come up with ideas or I do do analysis that we actually sit and discuss it. And I think that that was just over time. I think that your point was correct. I think they initially brought me on because of the private stuff, because they thought I was a relatively sharp guy. And also, you have to understand the thing about the family office world is the incentives are a little bit different, right? So if you're running a hedge fund, you have to outperform every quarter because your investors are constantly looking at it. They're constantly at risk of drawing out their capital, and you have to be super on top of it, et cetera. Here, the number one name of the game is don't lose money because this is mostly their personal capital and what's not their personal capital is friends and family. Right. So it's a it's a lot different type of environment that it's lower stress or pressure. And the way we just think about it is much different. So I think that's also been a benefit for me. I think, you know, there's no way I'd be able to go to traditional global macro hedge fund with my background and have been able to do that. I think now maybe I could, just because I've had this learning experience and I've and I've learned from someone who's so accomplished and so be someone who could. Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:51:55] So I was going to say and so it's a little bit more conservative since, like you said, you're not you're not having to hit some sort of like arbitrary 10 to 15 percent return a year. You're doing more fixed income kind of lower risk, mostly deals. Or is that how you should think about it?
Grbarasia: [00:52:11] No, no. So we're like, we're effectively have we have like this internal benchmark that we hold ourselves to. We think about and even that was an analysis that we did, like a lot of, it's in a weird way. Like, I don't want to sound like someone who's like plugging the CFA Institute. But if you go through that whole curriculum, a lot of it is very much focused on more like wealth management. But that's kind of how we went through looking at their portfolio. So it's like if you have x hundred millions of dollars and you want to allocate one hundred million dollars of your personal money into this type of fund, what should the internal benchmark be? How should we think about it? So we ran all these analyses of like over 10 year periods over. In your periods, what has the highest Sharpe ratio is that a 60 40 portfolio is at a 50, 30, 50, 50, is it 70, 30, et cetera. Right. So what we came up with was we came up with this internal benchmark of 70 30 equity debt. And then other than that, we pretty much can do anything on top of it. Right. And we have set internal bounds where we're happy being up to 100 percent equity or down to 40 percent equity. So we'll give ourselves 70 30 plus or minus 30 percent.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:53:11] On the equity side, we have some flexibility, depending on Yeah.
Grbarasia: [00:53:14] Got it. Exactly. And then effectively on top of that, we can layer in futures positions, service positions, et cetera. But again, the thing that you have to think about is like, Look, if? The equity market is up, whatever it is now, twenty four percent bonds or whatever, so like let's just say, for example, we end the year up 15 percent just for round numbers. And let's just say that you have $100 million in your personal money in, right? You just made 15 million bucks in order to make 15 million bucks of carry off of $100 million fund right, you would have to outperform by whatever ridiculous number it is. So that kind of gets back to what I'm saying about, like the math is just a little bit different because one, it's their own money to go to investors and then to. There's not that secondary layer of like, you're not paying a third party advisor and these guys also enjoy it, right? Like this is an intellect at a certain point in time. I think when you have enough money, you just want to do things that are intellectually stimulating. So for all of us and we actually every day go out for lunch as a group and we just sit and we talk about the markets, we talk about politics, we talk about everything. And I think that's something that's just enjoyable to continue to keep things sharp. And then we make our positions literally kind of like three to five year thematic type bet on countries on that type of thing. And that's the way we think about it.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:54:31] It's really interesting, man. It sounds like an awesome job.
Grbarasia: [00:54:34] So, I mean, look, I'm very fortunate. It is. It's a unique situation, and I'm very fortunate in the people who I work for incredibly nice people.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:54:41] So what's the what does the future hold for you? You feel like you're just going to be riding off into the sunset in this in this role? And what's your
Grbarasia: [00:54:50] Thoughts because you did key in on it? Like, I get very restless, so I had this conversation with them, which is that the downside of a family office is that there is no real upward mobility. I mean, a hedge fund that grows and people take over and people run and blah right here. If these guys decide tomorrow to close up shop, that's kind of the end of it. And so it's not that they wouldn't necessarily be open towards, you know, different ideas or, you know, essentially putting together a portfolio that I can more independently run. But I do think more of my background is on the private side, and it's just something that they're not as interested in doing. That being said, they have shown a willingness, like I said, to cede some of these little things put money here, but money there. So I think for me, it's finding a way to use the infrastructure that I have, the relationships that I've developed and then create something whereby I have a little bit more control and ownership over how that manifests itself. I don't know. And honestly, it's something I struggle with all the time because, you know, if I was someone who was a little bit more content and you know, this is kind of a personal growth thing I might have to work on. You're right, I could be in a very good position where for the next number of years, you know, continuing to build out this book, taking on more responsibility, maybe getting to a point where some of it is completely autonomous under me, you know, showing off if I can get returns there. And it's a really attractive opportunity. I do think the entrepreneurial itch is something that I am constantly thinking about. And, you know, it's still something that is in the back of my mind. How can I build a business? How can you build multiple businesses? Because even I tell these guys, like, look, they've made a lot of money. And yeah, they did it in the hedge funds they did in finance. But at the end of the day, the reason they made a lot of money was because they're entrepreneurs, right? They started hedge funds. They started businesses where they went out and they raise capital. They had equity ownership of the fund itself. And that's what made them, you know, high net worth individuals. And so I still do believe that, you know, the tools you learn from banking, from all these different things are incredibly valuable. But if you want to get to a point where you have autonomy, have at least in my opinion, again, you know, I would rather be that person who owns 100 percent of a 10 billion dollar business than that person who's, you know, a bigger thing just because I think that provides more flexibility. So it's a long way of saying I have no idea where the future holds. You know, it could be it could be still here five years from now, or it could be somewhere completely different. Who knows?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:57:16] Interesting, man. Well, it sounds like whatever you choose, your future is very bright. So congratulations on all the crazy and interesting steps you've taken to get to where you are.
Grbarasia: [00:57:27] Yeah, it's been a lot, but it's an awesome, it's an awesome store. It's an awesome winding road and very non-traditional. When I heard you say it's not traditional, I kind of laughed because I'm like, I've heard almost everything.
Grbarasia: [00:57:38] Yeah, I know I told you. I mean, I was like, Oh, I'm sure anyone who's willing to go on a podcast and talk about themselves thinks of themselves as someone special, so I figured I had to borrow a little bit.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:57:50] Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate you upping the bar. A new bar has been set, but yeah, thank you. No. Thank you so much for real, for real, for taking the time it's been. It's been really fun. Greg.
Grbarasia: [00:58:01] Perfect. Thank you very much, I enjoyed it and happy to continue or speak to whomever.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:58:06] And thanks to you, my listeners at Wall Street Oasis, if you have any suggestions whatsoever, please don't hesitate to send them my way. Patrick at Wall Street Oasis. And till next time.
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